Proceedings Paper

When I was invited two years ago to talk about low power lasers,
Dave Belforte's emphasis was basically on 50 W lasers and below. At
this time, he's expanded it to 500 W lasers and below, which to a
certain extent is an indiction of how the low power sealed laser
technology has gone, which I have been very much involved with over
the last six or seven years. For the purposes of this talk, as I
said, low power lasers is less than 500 W and specifically I'm going
to focus in on lasers that are 250 W and less. I'm going to eniphasize
again sealed laser systems which are, in terms of CO2 lasers, are
those things that look much more like HeNes. They have no gas
requirements, you basically plug them in the wall because they're
higher power beasts, you put water in to them to cool them off and
light comes out. There is a dramatic difference between those lasers
and the flowing gas or the fast axial flow and so forth that people
think of when they start talking about the high power lasers.